Drones could be about to transform forest conservation by monitoring forest regeneration projects in the tropics. Drone-based monitoring was tested recently as part of a study by the University of Maryland and University of California, Santa Cruz, together with the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica.
The researchers adopted a remote-sensing technique called Ecosynth, which generates 3D “point cloud” models of vegetation from computer vision software paired with aerial photos from 10 megapixel cameras fitted to the drones. The US$1,500 drones captured thousands of overlapping images across 13 one hectare forest restoration sites spread across a 100 km2 mountainous area of southern Costa Rica.
The results showed that Ecosynth was as accurate as human monitoring in most situations. The system did have accuracy issues when the canopy was low however.
“It’s early days but drones have great potential for monitoring restoration efforts in tropical forests,” said lead author of the study Dr. Rakan Zahawi.
Click here for source (Elsevier)
Photo: Elsevier
